


Quarter to Three

by Abacura



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Kidlock, M/M, Monster!John, monsterlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2018-01-01 22:21:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abacura/pseuds/Abacura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes had assumed that everyone else must be blind as well as stupid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quarter to Three

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mochiandtea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mochiandtea/gifts).



> Written for [this](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/21766.html?thread=128384262#t128384262) prompt on kinkmeme: _There's a few Monsterlock fics out there where Sherlock is monster under the bed and John is the sweet kid who befriends him. I'd like to see those roles reversed please._
> 
> Thank you to [IsmAsm](http://ismasm.tumblr.com/) for being my wonderful beta at 1:00 in the morning and to [Bel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/beltainefaerie) for giving this an additional once-over and for being encouraging. This fic is un-britpicked, and I accept full responsibility for all mistakes and americanisms below. If anyone finds any such mistakes, please do let me know.
> 
> Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, and all related characters are in the public domain. This story can be read as any incarnation of Holmes or Watson.

When he was a young child, Sherlock Holmes had assumed that everyone else must be blind as well as stupid. It was either that or they were all purposefully feigning ignorance as some sort of cruel prank. It was infuriating the way they giggled about his ‘overactive imagination’, brushed off his observations as if he were making it all up as some sort of childish game. It wasn’t until later, when his observations began to startle those around him with their uncanny accuracy, that he realized that he could see things that other people simply could not. To him it was all so obvious. The stories told in the dust patterns on the coffee table in the downstairs sitting room, the maid’s lipstick smudged on his father’s handkerchief, the dark shadow that slunk up and down the hallways every night at 2:41 am, all of these things that were so obvious to Sherlock seemed to slip right past the awareness of everyone else. It was as if their eyes saw, but their minds were refusing to absorb and interpret the data, and were simply letting it slide away. Sherlock couldn’t understand how most people lived in such willful ignorance.

  
At first he thought that he wasn’t alone. After all, Mycroft was just as observant as he. Mycroft saw the way the rug in the hallway was oriented, and that there were five china teacups where clearly there should be six. What was more, Mycroft knew what these things meant, could come to the same painfully obvious conclusions. He saw just as Sherlock saw, and for a very brief amount of time Sherlock thought that this meant that Mycroft could also see the old man with no mouth who always stood next to the old grandfather clock by the front door, soundlessly staring at everyone who passed, but whom no one else seemed to realize existed. Perhaps Mycroft had noticed the disembodied hands that lived in the kitchen cabinets, the ones that scuttled about in the night when no one but Sherlock was looking. He had been so sure, positive even. After all, it only made sense. Mycroft wouldn’t ignore such things, not like all the other idiots did. One evening, he asked his elder brother why no one else seemed to notice the wailing, and occasional crunching noises, coming from the attic. Mycroft, however, had only given Sherlock a condescending, slightly sad smile, and told him that one day he would realize that these things he thought he was seeing and hearing weren’t real.

  
Sherlock hadn’t known how to respond. Of course they were real. He could see them with his own two eyes, hear them bumping around in the night and breathing under his bed! He knew what his senses were telling him, and his senses couldn’t be wrong.

  
Could they?

  
Only madmen see things that clearly aren’t real, Mycroft had said to him, and Sherlock didn’t want to be mad, did he?

  
Sherlock had lain awake in bed that night thinking about impossible things. He had never before doubted the truth of his own perceptions. Conclusions could be false, he knew that from experience, but observations themselves were always sound.

  
Weren’t they?

  
Sherlock heard the scrape of claws on wood flooring outside in the hallway, saw the crack under his door darken as the shadow in the hallway crept past his room, and for the first time Sherlock was afraid. Not of the thing stalking about outside his bedroom, or of the mouthless old man downstairs next to the ticking grandfather clock, or even of the cat-sized spider living under the dining room table. No, Sherlock was afraid that all of these things that apparently only he could see weren’t actually real.

  
Sherlock was afraid, terrified even, that he was, in fact, mad.

  
With an undignified whimper, Sherlock burrowed under the duvet as if it could protect him from this horrifying possibility. He curled himself up into a tiny little ball and willed these thoughts away. Stop. Delete.

  
The soft sounds of weeping had begun to drift down from the attic above. The creature in the hallway was snuffling at Sherlock’s door. Sherlock curled up tighter.

  
A bump and an irritated rumble came from beneath Sherlock’s bed as he shifted about restlessly. He immediately fell still.

  
“Sorry,” Sherlock murmured morosely, and tried to be less disruptive as he resumed squirming around in his bed, trying in vain to get comfortable. He heard the thing under his bed shift, and then slowly drag itself out from beneath him. Sherlock felt his mattress dip, and he peeked out from beneath the duvet to find that he was no longer alone in his bed.

  
John was perched at the foot of the bed, its huge muscular bulk balanced effortlessly on the edge of the footboard. Its eyes lacked pupils or sclera and were instead a solid blue as dark as the night sky, except for when the moonlight caught them and made them flash red like a pair of scarlet mirrors. Its hair was closer to dense fur, rough yet warm, and its hands were large enough to cradle Sherlock’s skull in a single palm. It sat preternaturally still, its head cocked slightly to the side, with a wide shark-like smile on its lined face that showed off a set of impossibly long, fang-like teeth.

  
“’Sorry’?” it rumbled. It made an odd growly noise that Sherlock had learned to interpret as a laugh. “Since when do you say you’re sorry for anything?”

  
Sherlock lowered his eyes and pulled the duvet back over his head. It was right, Sherlock wasn’t acting like himself and he knew it, and he hated that Mycroft had the power to make him doubt himself with just a few well-place words.

  
After a few seconds of silence, Sherlock heard a shifting sound from the foot of the bed.

  
“Sherlock…?” John began to tug at the duvet, trying to pull it down, but Sherlock only clutched it around him tighter. A beat later, he felt the creature’s huge weight shifting above him on the mattress, its limbs caging him in as he tried to curl himself up even smaller. Honestly, couldn’t John tell that Sherlock was upset? Couldn’t it just leave him alone so he could feel sorry for himself in peace?

  
Sherlock felt John’s huge hands grasp the duvet and rip in away, leaving the small boy shivering and exposed in the cool nighttime air. Sherlock kept his eyes tightly shut. He couldn’t handle having to question his senses, and therefore his sanity, anymore tonight and why couldn’t John just go away?

  
Sherlock briefly entertained the thought that if John were just some construct of his imagination, than he could make it go away if he just kept his eyes shut. He immediately rejected that idea, because that would only make Mycroft right.

  
Besides, he didn’t want John to be imaginary.

  
Sherlock still didn’t open his eyes.

  
He could feel John’s hot breath ghosting over his skin as the creature bore down around Sherlock’s small body. He felt one of John’s massive paws gently cup his face. Its hands were warm and rugged, familiar, and most definitely real. Sherlock instinctively pressed his face against his friend’s palm.

  
“What’s gotten into you?” John rumbled. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  
Sherlock turned his face further into John’s hand, as if he could hide there. He breathed in John’s scent and began to relax as he felt its wickedly sharp claws ghost over the delicate skin of his scalp.

  
“It’s nothing,” Sherlock mumbled. “Just Mycroft being stupid again.”

  
John gave amused, rumbling growl. “Really?” he asked in mock surprise. Sherlock felt John’s other hand slip around his waist and under, supporting him. John’s hands always make Sherlock feel so small. Just one can completely encircle his narrow waist. His right hip was now cradled in John’s palm, while the rough pad of John’s thumb rubbed circles into Sherlock’s left hip. Its claws delicately traced back and forth over the soft flesh of Sherlock’s belly.

  
“And what did Mycroft say this time?” John asked, his voice becoming serious but his touch remaining feather light.

  
Sherlock was quiet at first. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he was feeling so much better now that he could feel the gentle brush claws over the vulnerable skin of his nape and belly. He wasn’t sure why, but it always made him feel so safe. Sherlock relaxed further.

  
“He said that you weren’t real. He said that none of the things I can see are real, and he-“ Sherlock swallowed. “He said that only mad people see what’s not real,” he finished in a whisper.

  
John was silent for a moment, then gathered up the little boy and held him to his chest.

  
“Do you think I’m not real, Sherlock?”

  
Sherlock shook his head furiously. “No! I know you’re real, I always know what’s real! I can see you and hear you and feel you and you have to be real, you have to be!” Sherlock sucked in a shaky breath, trying to calm his voice which had begun to tremble and crack. If he wasn’t careful, he’s end up crying again, and at six years old (almost seven) Sherlock was far too grown-up to be crying himself to sleep. “Y-you’re my f-friend, you h-h-have to be-“ Sherlock’s breath caught in his throat. He tried to take deep breaths to calm himself down. Sherlock listened to John’s heartbeat and was momentarily glad that John was the kind of monster that had a beating heart.

  
“I don’t want to be mad, John,” Sherlock whispered into the darkness.

  
The bedroom door creaked loudly as the shadow in the hallway made its nightly attempt to slink into Sherlock’s room. John clutched Sherlock tighter and gave a blood-curdling snarl that made warmth bloom in Sherlock’s chest and sent the shadow skittering away. His John, his wonderful monster, always protecting him.

  
John settled and resumed stroking his claws through Sherlock’s curls. Sherlock breathed, and felt himself calm down.

  
“Am I mad?” he asked quietly.

  
John was silent for a moment, and then in its low growly voice that Sherlock could feel vibrating through its chest, said, “I’ve known a lot of children who could see the world around them, just like you can. I’ve seen them hide in their parents’ beds and close their eyes as if that could make the real world go away. And do you know what? Funny thing is, it works, almost every time. I’ve seen it again and again. You tell yourself that something isn’t real long enough, and you start to believe it.”

  
John paused to look down at the little human boy who called it his friend.

  
“And that’s why they weren’t really like you at all, were they? Because you’re not afraid of the real world, are you Sherlock? You don’t hide and lie to yourself like all the others. You don’t walk around with your eyes closed because you are afraid to be different. You’re almost seven years old and you can still see me, do you realize how amazing that is?”

  
Sherlock smiled. He liked it when John called him amazing.

  
“You’re a genius, Sherlock, and if people call you mad it’s because they’re wrong.”

  
“People are idiots,” Sherlock murmured. He was feeling so much better now, and it was getting late, or perhaps early?

  
John growled (laughed), and Sherlock felt so warm and sleepy…

  
“…John?”

  
“Hmm?”

  
“Will you stay with me? Not just for tonight, but always?”

  
Sherlock felt himself being shifted onto his side, John curling protectively around him and pulling the duvet back over the both of them. Sherlock wiggled closer into John’s warmth.

  
“I was afraid, Sherlock, just now. When I saw you hiding under your duvet, all curled up and upset, I thought… well. I thought that you were trying to forget.”

  
“Don’t be stupid, John,” Sherlock whispered, fading fast. “You’re my friend. Why would I forget you?”

  
John didn’t answer. Sherlock lay in his bed, wrapped up in his monster, already dreaming even though he wasn’t yet completely asleep. He drifted off to the sounds of the grandfather clock chiming the hour downstairs, the mournful wailing in the attic, and his John whispering in his ear “Always, Sherlock.”


End file.
